Imagine if Ontario’s secondary school program were structured so that students got real work experience, specialized instruction in their area of interest and training solid enough to qualify them to go to university, college or straight into the workforce.

What a blessing that would be for students who now spend 14 years in public education and leave with no real job skills or specific career prospects. It would be particularly relevant for people who are impatient with academic courses that seem to lack practical application.

I’m going to let you in on a secret, but you’ve got to promise to tell someone. Ontario already has such a program, but the government spends very little time talking about it. There are millions of dollars to spend on advertising policies that happen to tie in to the Liberal election platform, but something that can change your kids’ lives gets scant attention.

That’s why it was so encouraging to see Ottawa’s public school board run a half-page newspaper ad extolling the virtues of a tremendous work experience program that hardly anyone has heard about.

Part of the recognition problem lies in the awkward, bureaucratic label the government has put on the program. They call it the Specialist High Skills Major, which gets boiled down to SHSM in edu-speak. Something like Career Start would be closer to the mark.

The basic idea is to let students identify an area of potential career interest. Programs offered range from entrepreneurship to trades to information technology and include things such as arts and culture and urban farming. Ottawa’s public school board offers 35 programs consisting of seven to nine credits in Grades 11 and 12, including two co-op credits. It involves teaching job-specific skills as well as work experience, job-shadowing and learning what a workplace requires.

Local uptake of the little-known program has been limited. Just 700 of the public board’s roughly 12,000 Grade 11 and 12 students are enrolled in the program, only about six per cent of those eligible. The board has set a modest goal of increasing that number by one percentage point next year. Provincially, 14 per cent of students take the program and the goal is 25 per cent.

The work experience program has been around for 12 years, but it was a bit of an orphan until a 2016 provincial study on how to create a skilled labour force. The expert group who did the report urged closer links between schools and employers to help develop the workers our economy needs.

About time. Ontario likes to boast of its highly skilled workforce but that is typically measured by looking at the percentage who attended college or university. That’s something quite different from having actual job skills. The panel noted that only about half of Ontarians have the basic literacy and numeracy skills required to handle the technological demands of the workplace.

To its credit, the provincial government is spending some money to implement the recommendations of its job skills task force, but the pace is leisurely. It has committed an additional $33 million this year for skilled workforce enhancements, a little less than one-third of it for the high school work experience program. To put that $10.1 million in context, the provincial education budget is $24 billion. The goal is to add 17,000 students to the program provincewide.

It’s odd that the Liberals have failed to tout their practical secondary school program. It’s one of the best things they have done. Perhaps smaller class sizes and expanded kindergarten were sexier.

Education is one of the provincial government’s two largest and most important responsibilities, but it has simply gone off the political radar. The Liberals just want to talk about fairness and free stuff and the PCs barely gave education a mention in their platform, not that it matters now.

Nevertheless, the work experience program exists and it can offer students tangible benefits. Parents should take note.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa commentator, novelist and former Ontario PC candidate. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.